DNA & Genealogy

Australia’s state-based online information resources can provide vital records to help you grow your family tree or relocate living relatives. If you are just starting your family history research, read about Australia's free national resources first, to locate records of any interactions your family may have had with the government - such as immigration, military service, naturalisation, and patent applications. Also look for news or family announcements published in newspapers.

Details revealed in Australia's national resources may provide clues to help you pin-point and refine your searches in the relevant state records, and vice versa.

Information to be found in the free national records may include addresses or states, occupations and skills, employment sponsors, character references, physical descriptions, medical records, details of next-of-kin, parents, spouses and children, place of birth, letters, signatures, and sometimes even photos.

States & Territories

Australia consists of six states and two main territories, with each administering their own government information resources and providing different levels of coverage and online access to historical records. Some online offerings are very generous, and some quite limited.

Search Strategy

The timeframe for searching will be different for every family, and in every state, but the starting point for state-based family research in Australia is generally the state registries of births, deaths and marriages, and state archives/records offices and libraries (see links further below).

Ancestors

To trace your Australian families backwards, start with yourself and follow the BDM certificate trail for each line, combined with clues from other records to locate the various families’ places of origin.

Living relatives

To locate your living relatives or their descendants in Australia, start tracing forwards from clues in immigration records or early electoral roll information.

BDM certificate availability is restricted for recent generations/decades, although some states publish marriages indexes up to 1965, deaths indexes up to 1988, and will & probate records to more recent years.

Electoral rolls are available online at Ancestry and FindMyPast for most states up to 1980, so children born up to late 1962 may be included, possibly with their parents.

More recent electoral rolls are available in some local and state library collections. Current electoral rolls (in electronic form) can only be inspected in person at any Australian Electoral Commission office (no photos or digital copies can be taken).

Electoral rolls include full names and occupations, and addresses that can be cross-checked with current telephone directories to see if a family member still resides at the same address.

Reconstruct & Connect

Every family history is unique, so there is no ‘one formula’ that works for everyone in tracing either their ancestors or their living relatives.

Link all the information and clues found using the above state-based resources, together with the free national resources, the non-government sources and commercial/subscription database resources, to reconstruct your families.

Strategic use of the above resources – particularly immigration, naturalisation, birth, death and marriage indexes and certificates, electoral rolls and newspaper announcements – can usually rebuild your family tree backwards enough to countries of origin and forwards enough to find and reconnect with living relatives.